A Democratic Socialist Blog

The Truth About Social Programs

U.S. social programs, set up to address important problems, often fall short by funding specific models/strategies (“interventions”) that are not effective. When evaluated in scientifically-rigorous studies, social interventions in K-12 education, job training, crime prevention, and other areas are frequently found ineffective or marginally effective. Interventions that produce sizable, sustained effects on important life outcomes tend to be the exception. Meanwhile, respected government measures show that the United States has made little progress since the late 1970s in key areas such as reducing poverty and increasing K-12 educational achievement.

The Liberal Candidates seems to be just as down on social programs as conservatives. When offering solutions, there are just bad aid programs offered by Liberal to Conservative Democrats.

1.) In the 21st century, as we continue quickly automating away half our jobs in the next 20 years, jobs less cognitively-complex and more physically-laborious , we need to enable ourselves to freely pursue our more creative and complex ventures. Some of the best work happening right now, is the stuff being done in our free time that is unpaid like Wikipedia and our many other open-source community creations, not to mention all the care work performed for our young and elderly. Basic income is a means of recognizing this unpaid work as having great societal value, and further enabling it.
90% of the Universal Income can be paid by closing food stamp and welfare, and unemployment offices. Other portion exacted from varied sources such as The Military and Corporate Welfare.

2.) Single Payer: Taxes would not have to go up. In sum, single payer national health insurance would provide access to high quality care for everyone at an affordable price. Since this would be beneficial for individuals, businesses, and even the government, why don’t we have a national single payer plan? The reason: The political will has not developed because of lingering concerns over the alleged defects of such a proposal. These supposed defects have been publicized widely by those interests that for ideological, financial, or other self-serving reasons are opposed to it. Since the benefits are unimpeachable, we should look the claims of the plan’s critics.

The first misgiving usually expressed is that we cannot afford to pay for comprehensive care for everyone. Every other industrialized nation provides comprehensive care to everyone at a much lower cost than our system that leaves so many out. Other nations spend 6 to 10 percent of their Gross Domestic Product, or GDP, whereas we, the wealthiest nation on earth, spend 14 percent of our GDP. We already have enough funds dedicated to health care to provide the highest quality of care for everyone. Studies conducted by the Congressional Budget Office, the General Accounting Office, the Lewin Group and Boston University School of Public Health have shown that, under a single payer system, comprehensive care can be provided for everyone without spending any more funds than now are spent.

The F 15 Fighter Jet, tax breaks for the Walton Family and other Billionaires
ranging from $85,000,000,000 can pay for Universal Income, National Health Care, Public Schools.

$363,000,000,000 goes to elements of Corporate Welfare
$60,000,000,000 goes to out sourcing, while $36,000,000,000 would go to varied children’s programs through out the USA.

Look at the Walmart Scheme: 1. Pay your employees so little they need food stamps.
2. Exploit Tax Loop Holes that help avoid contributing to the system. 3. Receieve billions of Dollars when food stamps are spent on stores.

A secret behind Wal-Mart’s rapid expansion in the United States has been its extensive use of public money. This includes more than $1.2 billion in tax breaks, free land, infrastructure assistance, low-cost financing and outright grants from state and local governments around the country. In addition, taxpayers indirectly subsidize the company by paying the healthcare costs of Wal-Mart employees who don’t receive coverage on the job and instead turn to public programs such as Medicaid. This website brings together available information on both kinds of subsidies involved in Wal-Mart’s “double-dipping.” In the future we will add data on other ways Wal-Mart relies on taxpayers to finance its growth.

Estimate show the that the difference between corporate welfare + social programs is the the latter would actually give us a a 68% savings on National Expenditures.

The nonsense of how are we going to afford these programs are a ploy to play into right wing propaganda.